YouTube SEO and measuring results

YouTube is the second largest search engine after Google, and where a lot of people go to look for product demos, first-use experiences, and “how-to” videos. YouTube is a serious and powerful marketing platform that can provide your brand with the ability to promote a wide variety of products, in a visual way.

YouTube is a very effective marketing tool that can generate a high level of conversions. To make it work, you always have to provide a coupon link to your course; I will tell you where and how.

Admittedly, YouTube may seem a bit overwhelming at first, but the platform makes it very easy to share and digest content. Your audience wants to learn, get a sample of your course, and engage with your brand through video.

As a starting point, it’s important to choose keywords that are relevant to people who are looking for new information, and to provide video content that educates based on those keywords.

Title

Just like with on-page SEO, it’s important to optimize your video’s title. The title is the first thing people will read when scrolling through a list of videos, so make sure it’s clear and compelling – it should awaken curiosity, or be instantly clear that your video will help them solve a problem. Keep titles to no more than about 60 characters long to keep text from being cut off in the results pages.

Description

YouTube will only show the first two to three lines (about 100 characters) of your video’s description; viewers will need to click “show more” to see the rest. Be sure to include any important links or CTAs in the beginning of your description. Below this, you can include the video transcript which is full of keywords.

Tags

Using tags is a way to associate your video with similar videos, and boost its reach. When tagging videos, tag your most important keywords first, and try to include a good mix of more common keywords and long-tail keywords.

Category

After you upload a video, YouTube will allow you to choose a video category under “Advanced settings.” Video categories are another tool to help you group your video with related content on the platform.

Playlists

Are you creating videos around a few specific topics? Create playlists! Playlists allow you to link videos together from not only your channel, but other channels, as well. Playlists help to organize your channel and encourage viewers to continue watching similar content.

You can’t measure your success without setting up your goals. You’ve filmed, edited, uploaded, and optimized your video, so you clearly have a goal to accomplish.

Goals might be to increase brand awareness or views, boost subscribers, clicks, or inbound links, raise the number of social shares, and maybe sometimes to make a sale. Video is a great way to humanize your brand by showing product tutorials, sharing customer reviews, and introducing employees and customers. It also allows you to build credibility by publishing interesting content that helps the viewer.

Watch Time and Audience Retention

Pay attention to how many minutes your audience has spent viewing your content on your channel both as a whole, and by video. This helps you see what pieces of content actually catch viewers’ interest and what they are consuming. A video with a higher watch time is more likely to rank higher in results.

Traffic Sources

The traffic sources report shows how viewers are finding your content online. From this data, you can decide which marketing channels bring the most viewers to your videos. For example, you can see if viewers are finding your content through YouTube search, through your website, or through outside search engines.

Demographics

The demographics report helps you research your audience by age and gender. You can then break down age groups and genders by other criteria like geography. This data will help you set up targeted visitors in your ads, as well as to change your videos or subject matter, based on their needs.

Engagement Reports

Engagement reports help you learn what content is resonating with your audience. You can see what viewers are clicking on, sharing, commenting, and promoting.